conflate

Yuval Noah Harariの "Homo Deus" を読んでいます。

When religous advertise themselves, they tend to emphasise their beautiful values. But God often hides in the fine print of factual statements. The Catholic religion markets it self as the religion of universal love and compassion. How wonderful! Who can object to that? Why, then, are not all humans Catholic? Because when you read the fine print, you discover that Catholicism also demands blind obedience to a pope 'who never makes mistakes' even when he orders his followers to go on crusades and burn heretics at the stake. Such practical instructions are not deduced solely from ethical judgements. Rather, they result from conflating ethical judgements with factual statements.

前回 "unalloyed" を取り上げましたが、"conflating" は "alloy" と同様にミックスすることですね。知らない単語だったので英英辞書で確認します。


・Oxford English Dictionary: Combine (two or more texts, ideas, etc.) into one.: ‘the urban crisis conflates a number of different economic and social issues’

・Collins Dictionary: if you conflate two or more descriptions or ideas, or if they conflate, you combine them in order to produce a single one.: Unfortunately the public conflated fiction with reality and made her into a saint.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: to combine two or more separate things, especially pieces of text, to form a whole: She conflated the three plays to produce a fresh new work.